Histories english 01 i am a dalek (v1 0) gareth roberts

Equipped with space suits, golf clubs and a flag, the Doctor and Roseare planning to live it up on the Moon, Apollo-mission style. But theTARDIS has other plans, landing them instead in a village on thesouth coast of England; a picture-postcard sort of place wherenothing much happens. . . until now.Archaeologists have dug up a Roman mosaic, dating from the year 70AD. It shows scenes from ancient myths, bunches of grapes – and aDalek. A few days later a young woman, rushing to get to work, isknocked over and killed by a bus. Then she comes back to life.It’s not long before all hell breaks loose, and the Doctor and Rosemust use all their courage and cunning against an alien enemy – anda not-quite-alien accomplice – who are intent on destroyinghumanity.Featuring the Doctor and Rose as played by David Tennant and BilliePiper in the hit series from BBC Television.

CHAPTER ONER OSE CHECKED THE SEAL on her space helmet, then she looked acrossthe TARDIS controls to the Doctor.‘Turning off the air,’ he said, his white-gloved hand flicking one ofthe many switches on the panel. His voice reached Rose through atwo-way radio link built into their helmets. ‘Turning off the gravity.’He flicked another switch and smiled over at her. Then he remembered something. ‘Oh – and balance pressure,’ he added, flippinganother control. ‘Because we don’t wanna burst. Going up, MaryPoppins.’Rose felt the weight leave her body and reached out to steady herself on the edge of her side of the panel. ‘Can’t believe it,’ she said.She cast a glance to the police box doors, imagining what lay outside.‘Walking on the moon.’‘More like leaping,’ said the Doctor happily. To demonstrate, he putone foot forward and let himself be carried through the vacuum, landing with the grace of a ballet dancer a good fifteen feet away. ‘Practise,then,’ he told Rose. ‘You don’t want to fall flat on your backside outthere. Leap!’Rose let go of the panel and followed his example, remembering topush gently, and landing only a little less expertly right next to him.‘Giant leap. And leap!’ the Doctor encouraged her, and they set off,floating and bumping around the TARDIS together.Rose grabbed one of the wall struts, kicked off and made a perfectcartwheel, watching the large room circle around her.The Doctor beamed at her. ‘Got it? Good.’ He reached for a longwhite pole and a battered old bag that he’d tied to one of the floorplates before turning off the gravity. From the bag he produced a longline of string with flags of all the nations strung along it. ‘The bit we’velanded on won’t be explored for a few thousand years, so let’s give ’em

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a shock when they get there.’ He looked along the line, considering,and halted at a green and blue flag with a thick black and yellowstripe along the middle. ‘Tanzania?’ he said mischievously. Then hiseyes lit on the next flag along, which featured a crest and the initialsWI. ‘No, gotta be this! Women’s Institute.’ His face fell just for asecond. ‘We can’t.’ Then he smiled again and attached the flag to thepole. ‘We can! And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon themoon’s mountains green? That’ll keep a few historians in jobs in theforty-ninth century.’The abandoned string of flags hung in the air before Rose’s face.Suddenly the importance of what was about to happen struck her.‘Wait a sec,’ she told the Doctor, halting him with a hand to his shoulder as he made to leap for the doors. ‘I’m gonna be the first womanon the moon. I know I’ve been a lot further, but that’s amazing. Themoon, you never think about it, it’s just. . . up there. And now I’mon it.’ She studied his face. ‘I bet you think it’s like going to Calais orsomething.’The Doctor turned to face her. His features were alive with wonderand excitement. Not for the first time, Rose felt it was as if he was seeing through her eyes, and she wondered if that was one of the reasonshe needed somebody to travel with. ‘Rose, the moon is incredible. Everything down on Earth relies on it. Rats jump for it. Tides rush outfrom it. Humans kiss under it. Without it there’d be nothing downthere worth the light. And that just happened by chance – trillions ofodds against it – one bit of stardust meets another bit of stardust.’Rose jumped over to the doors and reached out for the handle, thenstopped. ‘I should think up something to say.’‘Just get out there,’ said the Doctor, swinging a bag full of golf clubson to his shoulder. ‘Leap!’Rose shut her eyes, pulled the door open and leapt.She came down with a loud thud, smashing into a wooden table. Ithad been an ordinary leap, not weightless at all.Picking herself up – the suit’s padding had protected her from theworst of the fall – she looked around. There were more tables, stoolsand chairs, a couple of fruit machines, a blackboard with QUIZ TUES-

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DAYS 8 p.m. TODAY’S SPECIAL CHICKEN CURRY chalked on it, anda long bar with towels over the pumps. All this was lit by the earlymorning sunlight of a half-hearted early British summer. The buildingwas old, supported by wooden beams.She turned to face the TARDIS, which stood even more out of placethan usual at a corner of the bar. The space-suited Doctor stood in thedoors, looking anywhere but at her. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s builtan exact replica of a pub on the moon!’Rose laughed, undid her helmet and pretended to punch him. ‘Giveit up! You’re so rubbish.’‘Not that far out,’ said the Doctor a little unhappily, pulling off hisown helmet. ‘If the moon is Calais, Earth’s Dover.’ He frowned. ‘It’sweird, though. I checked all the controls as we were coming in and wewere definitely heading for the moon. I even clocked it on the scannerjust before we landed, all grey and dusty, the moony old moon, thatlittle old matchmaker in the sky.’Rose could tell he was really concerned, that this wasn’t just anexcuse cooked up for her benefit. ‘Go and check the TARDIS, then.’The Doctor nodded. ‘I’ll go and check the TARDIS, then.’ But hestopped at the doors, looking out of the nearest window on to a villagegreen and church that were almost too typical of their kind. ‘Lookslike May. Looks like England.’ He sniffed. ‘Not too far from the sea.Hmm, get a whiff of that salt water. . . ’Rose laughed and pointed to the TARDIS. ‘Go on, go and check it.’The Doctor picked up his flagpole and bag of golf clubs and vanished back inside the TARDIS.Rose was about to follow him when she saw a newspaper lying onthe bar. She couldn’t stop herself from grabbing it in her gloved handand taking a look, checking the date. The Doctor was right: it wasMay.Whenever she came back to Earth, Rose liked to catch up on thenews. This was only a local paper, the front page concerned withnothing more exciting than a dispute over parking and a plan for asupermarket, but something made Rose take off her gloves and flickthrough its pages all the same as she walked idly towards the TARDIS.

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A few pages in she stopped dead. She felt her heart miss a beat.The headline ran ROMAN REMAINS AT CREDITON VALE. Beneathit was a colour picture of a middle-aged man in hard hat and yellowjacket, standing next to a large case that contained a broken sectionof Roman mosaic about six feet across. Depicted on the mosaic wasa full-length portrait of a man and woman, both handsome, dark andcurly-haired, in purple robes. Further along were a jug and a bunch ofgreen grapes. And right at the far side, shown in shades of gold on tinypieces of tile, was a familiar pepperpot shape. Three rods stuck outfrom it: an eye-stalk from the dome of its head, a sucker attachmentand a gun from its middle. Its lower half was studded with shiningcircular shapes.A Dalek.Rose ran for the TARDIS – and the police box door slammed shutin her face. There was a loud thump. The light on top began to flashand the ancient engines deep within the craft ground into life.‘Doctor!’ Rose called. ‘Doctor, what are you doing?’Five seconds later, the TARDIS was gone. A deep square imprint onthe pub’s flowery carpet was the only sign it had ever been there.

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CHAPTER TWOKATE YATES JUST knew it was going to be a bad day.She was dreaming that she was back at school. Everybody else inthe class was sixteen, while she was twenty-eight, and there werechildish sneers and whispers of ‘Why’s she still here?’ Then she heardher dad shouting up the stairs, ‘It’s eight o’clock!’ At the same momentthe radio on her bedside table came to life. A few seconds later sheheard the front door slam as her parents left for their jobs.Then the news finished and Wogan began talking, the gentle Irishchatter Kate had known since childhood seeping into her very bones.He talked about toothpaste, last night’s TV. . . small, funny things. Butfor Kate he was simply saying, Just five minutes longer. Five minuteslonger in your bed, Kate Yates, in the softest, most comfortable bed in thewhole world.He stopped talking and played some music. ‘This is Anne Murray,“Snowbird”.’Kate knew it was deadly, a song designed specifically to stop peoplegetting out of bed and going to work. It was a drowsy, yawny song.But she couldn’t resist, and she turned her face into a deep fold ofpillow, closed her eyes and felt that, like the snowbird, she too shouldspread her tiny wings and flyaway.A second later she heard another voice. A Scottish voice. Ken Bruce.Wogan was handing over to Ken Bruce – which could only mean itwasn’t a second later but half past nine.Kate sat up in bed and checked the clock. ‘What?’ she screamed.‘How can it be? What happened to those ninety minutes?’She threw back her duvet and ran for the bathroom, tore off herpyjamas, rolled a deodorant under her arms, grabbed a creased blousefrom the airing cupboard, slipped into her work skirt and shoes, andhurtled downstairs. A letter lay on the mat for her: another credit

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card statement that she could add to the tear-stained folder under herbed. She threw it over her shoulder, grabbed her bag, stuffed half acroissant her mum had left on the phone table into her mouth, andbolted through the front door, into what was often described as one ofthe most beautiful villages in the UK. But for Kate, Winchelham wasonly a beautiful trap.Because she was twenty-eight and back. Back in the room she’dgrown up in, waking each morning in the same single bed where, asa teenager, she’d dreamed of leaving. Creeping round the village forfear of bumping into someone from school and having to explain whyshe was here. The girl with the big-city dreams, returned from Londonunder a cloud of debt, living with her mum and dad. Sorting her lifeout while working in a call centre by the nature reserve, at a cornerdesk facing away from the curlews and kingfishers, with a view on tosome rubbish bins and the car park.Thoughts of the call centre quickened Kate’s pace down the winding street towards the green. Her boss, Serena, would right now belooking at the empty corner desk, pulling her cardigan over her enormous, unforgiving breasts and tutting. Serena, who wouldn’t openfiling cabinets in case she broke her nails. Serena, who disapprovedof Kate’s personal calls, yet seemed to spend half her working dayringing her friend Sheila to discuss her wayward husband in a flat,dull tone. ‘I said, “If she’s out of your bed and out of your life, howcome there are two tickets to the Gambia in your dresser drawer?”’Calls came from people across the country, furious that their bedshadn’t been delivered as promised, or had turned up with no headboard or without wheels. Those calls would now be going to voicemail.Kate couldn’t believe she was actually running towards Serena, running towards the angry voices.The village she knew in every detail – every lamp-post, every dodgypaving stone, every litter bin mocking her screwed-up life – blurredpast her as she ran to the green and the 9.40 bus. It was now 9.39.The buses were always late, but Kate just knew that this particularbus would be turning the corner by the church exactly on time, about

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now. That would mean a long walk to work along a shady, muddylane.So she ran even faster.Rose climbed out of her spacesuit. She could hear sounds of movement coming from upstairs. The last thing she wanted right now wasto have to explain herself to the landlord, so she unlocked a window,hauled it open and squeezed herself through the gap on to the sunny,empty village street.She knew the Doctor wouldn’t have abandoned her willingly. He’dbe back soon with some bizarre and technical explanation. But thenshe thought of the Dalek on the mosaic. Surely there had to be someconnection between it and the Doctor’s sudden disappearance. . .She was distracted from these dark thoughts by the prettiness ofwhat lay before her. The clouds were moving away now and the lightblue May sky framed an idyllic scene: post-office, a little museum,village green and church. The Doctor had been right – beyond thechurch and over some low hills she caught a glimpse of the sea. Asingle-decker bus pulled round the corner of the green by the churchand drove slowly along. It seemed impossible that the Doctor’s hectic,dangerous life could affect such a place, where things were carryingon much as they had for hundreds of years.Rose sat on a bench and took the TARDIS key from the pocket ofher jeans, waiting for it to glow and alert her to the Doctor’s return.In the distance she heard the sound of high heels running. Someonewas in a hurry.Kate whizzed round the corner on to the village green as she had donea million times before, sending a rinsed milk bottle left by somebody’sfront gate flying. She could hear the bus’s engine off to the left andknew in her heart she was too late, but still she kept running.A big ball of bitterness, caused only partly by the croissant she hadjust eaten, formed in her stomach. Was this it? A year ago she’d beenin London, selling her flip-flops in Camden Market, so confident aboutrepaying her business loan to the bank that she was using her credit

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card to pay her rent. She’d thought she was just getting started. Whatif she’d already finished, had crashed and burnt? What if she was justuseless? What if life was useless?She saw the back of the bus, on the other side of the green by thepub, rolling smugly away. She crashed to a halt in the middle of theroad. A fraction of a second later a bright red sports car zoomed roundthe corner and smashed into her.She had one tiny moment to realise that she was about to die. Thecredit card bill was never going to be paid off. She would never walkdown the long muddy lane in heels, catkins catching on her jacket.Serena would never tell her off for being two hours late. She’d neverget to do any of the wonderful things she’d planned. This was the endof it all. A stupid, silly accident.She thumped down on to the hard tarmac as the car screeched to ahalt. The milk bottle jingled by.The dull smack of metal on flesh caught at Rose’s heart. There wasno other sound like it – like a soul leaving the body. Her head full ofthoughts of her dad, she sprang from the bench and raced across thegreen.The driver of the sports car was standing, stunned, by the body ofa red-haired young woman. ‘I didn’t see her,’ he called to Rose in adead voice. ‘She just ran out and stopped. . . ’‘Call an ambulance!’ shouted Rose.The driver got out his mobile and started dialling.Rose knelt by the young woman and took her hand. The woman’seyelids were fluttering. There might still be a chance. She remembered watching a first aid video from her old job; after an accident,you have to keep the person talking. ‘Listen! Talk to me. My name’sRose Tyler. What’s your name?’The woman said faintly, ‘Kate. . . ’‘What’s your second name? Kate, what’s your surname? Talk to me!Everything’s gonna be fine. There’s an ambulance coming.’Rose clenched the hand in hers, but the middle of Kate’s body washorribly twisted, and a deep purple stain of blood was colouring her

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blouse.Rose squeezed her hand hard, so hard it hurt. ‘Kate!’Her eyes rolled. ‘Yates. . . I’m Kate Yates. . . ’ Then Rose saw thelight go out of her eyes.Suddenly something stung Rose’s hand. She flinched and drew itback. At the same time, Kate’s body twitched and shook. Her backarched. A green aura spread out from the wound, rolling out to coverher whole body. Rose swallowed. The air around Kate had the tangof a thunderstorm; she was crackling with power.The aura disappeared as quickly as it had come, as if flicked off bya switch.Kate’s red hair was now blonde.Rose leaned forward. ‘Kate?’Her blouse still stained, Kate calmly stood and picked up her bag.Rose looked down at where she’d lain, at the pool of fresh blood.‘It’s all right, thanks. I’m fine,’ said Kate.

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CHAPTER THREET HE D OCTOR LOOKED UP at the grinding central column of theTARDIS. As soon as he’d touched the controls, the doors had shutand the craft had decided to take off. ‘Hello! There should be twopassengers on this ship!’ he cried.He crossed to the scanner screen, which was filled with a strange setof symbols he hadn’t seen before. He knew one thing for sure, though:the TARDIS was not under the control of an outside influence. It hadchanged course from the moon and brought them to Earth. Now itwas taking him somewhere else. Even after nine centuries of travelthrough space and time, it could still surprise him.‘What are you trying to tell me? Don’t go all cryptic. Can’t you justsay? And where are we going now – Northampton?’ He flicked a fewbuttons with no result. ‘Stop, stop!’A second later the column shuddered to a halt, the big room tiltingand knocking him off his feet. He switched the screen to an outsideview of his new location. It showed a dark, empty concrete chamber.He stripped off his spacesuit and took his pinstripe suit jacket from apeg. Putting it on, he grabbed a torch from a locker, then swung thedoors open and strode out. Wherever the TARDIS had taken him, andfor whatever reason, it had only been in flight for a few seconds. Hecouldn’t be very far from where he’d left Rose.It certainly looked and smelt very different from the last stop. Theair was damp and decayed, with that special flat coolness you onlyfind underground. The beam of his torch pierced through the pitchblackness. It passed over bare concrete pillars to settle on a metalsign with AREA 3 written on it in stark, official lettering. Next to itwas a bracket where a fire extinguisher would once have fitted.Beside that was a huge studded dark green metal door, swung wideopen. He walked through it into a long, bare corridor. ‘Hello. Any-

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one about?’ he called, not expecting an answer. The place seemeddeserted, abandoned.He walked a little further down the corridor and turned into another room. The torch lit up two lines of old, rusting iron beds. Onthe wall by the door was a phone; the Doctor lifted it and listened.It was dead. The sole of his shoe scuffed against something on thefloor. He knelt down and picked up a tattered booklet with the title‘Protect and Survive’ and a date of 1980. ‘“Eat only tinned food,”’ heread from it.‘“If you live in a caravan or other similar accommodation whichprovides very little protection against fall-out, your local authoritywill be able to advise you on what to do.”’ He laughed to himself.‘Hello. It’s the council and we advise you to run like hell.’So he was in a nuclear bunker, a disused one by the look of it. Butwhy had the TARDIS brought him here?Before he had time to think about it any further, he heard something he was not expecting. He strained to listen. Yes, he was right.Somebody, somewhere in this bunker, was listening to the radio.He set off in search of that person.Frank Openshaw sat back proudly in his chair, watching the dig, tapping his toes to the song on the radio. The slow, patient business ofhis greatest project yet was spread out before him. Volunteers, mostlystudents from the local farming college, were working carefully downin the pit, which was lit by several huge lamps. He took a swig of coffee from the cup of his thermos flask, feeling secure and successful.This site was going to make his name. He didn’t care too much aboutthe fame, but the security of guaranteed work was another matter.He’d never let Sandra down again.Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, can I borrowyour phone?’ asked a voice in a slightly odd, London-but-not-quiteLondon accent.Frank looked up. The owner of the voice was too old to be a student; he was tall and very thin, dark-haired, dressed in a slightlyscruffy suit. Frank blinked. It was as if someone had switched on

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a bright light. The stranger shone with confidence and enthusiasm,and he found himself handing over his mobile phone without eventhinking about it.‘You won’t get a signal down here,’ Frank warned him.‘Bet I will,’ said the stranger. He took a slender metal tube from hispocket, flicked a switch on its side and held its tip to the side of thephone. Then he dialled.Frank looked on fascinated.He heard a woman’s voice on the phone. ‘OK, what happened?’‘I’m blaming the TARDIS,’ said the stranger. ‘Yeah, it’s all theTARDIS’s fault. It’s got all these emergency systems. I turned themall off years ago. They kept going off and I couldn’t hear myself think.Must have come back on. I’m at –’ he looked at Frank – ‘Where am I?’‘Crediton Vale,’ said Frank.‘Crediton Vale, disused bunker, must be about a mile and a halfaway. Lovely walk for you. I’m jealous. See you in a bit.’‘Hold on, Doctor,’ said the woman’s voice urgently. ‘Something really weird and important. Two things actually. First, there’s this dig,and they’ve –’‘Yeah, I’m there now. See you later. I can’t talk because I’m onsomeone else’s phone.’ He snapped the phone shut and handed itback to Frank. Then he rubbed his hands and looked down into thepit. ‘Digging,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if I like digging. Digging can begood, digging can be bad. Depending on what the diggers are diggingup.’ He turned to Frank and gave a wide, wide smile. ‘I know. Shall Istop talking for a bit?’Frank was looking at his phone’s screen. No bars. ‘The signal’sgone,’ he said.‘Has it?’ replied the stranger innocently.Frank pointed to the metal tube in the stranger’s hand. ‘What’sthat? How did it do that?’‘Don’t ask me,’ said the stranger. ‘Birthday present from my sisterin-law. I wanted a tie.’ He pointed over Frank’s shoulder to a longpiece of rotted wood, one of their biggest finds so far, which wastagged and laid out on a long work table. ‘That’s the turning spike

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from a Roman well, about AD 70. Tie your horse there, round andround it goes. Five minutes later one nice bucket of water, one verydizzy horse.’Frank got up and followed him to the table, scratching his head.‘I thought it was a supporting beam,’ he said. Something about thisbloke made him feel like a beginner.‘No, look at the edges. Too smooth for that.’ He reached out andshook Frank’s hand very tightly. ‘I’m the Doctor, by the way.’‘Frank Openshaw. They said someone was coming down from London. . . ’‘Did they?’ The Doctor saw another find on the table, a worn Romancoin. ’Ah, look at that. Nero. Takes me back.’ He knelt, slipped on apair of glasses and chuckled at the man’s profile on the coin. ‘He wasfatter than that.’ He pointed upwards. ’So, there was a Roman townthere, right? And it went up in the revolt of Boudicca. The Britonschucked everything down into these caves. About 1950 the Britishgovernment builds a great big bunker in the caves: centre of regionalgovernment. Looks like a bungalow up top, very secret. When theCold War ends, someone goes to fill this place in and build some flatson the surface. Then they find this stuff and call you in. Am I right orwhat?’,Frank swallowed. ‘Pretty much. OK, come and have a look at this.’He led the Doctor to the pile of most recent finds and handed him ametal triangle. ‘Gardening tool?’The Doctor shook his head sadly. ‘No, handle’s wrong. That’s apizza slice. Except they didn’t have tomatoes then. It was more likeherby cheese on toast. Cheesy naan actually. Yum.’ He took off hisglasses, put them away and looked right at Frank. ‘Sorry. Am I beingannoying?’‘Didn’t catch your name,’ said Frank.‘Just the Doctor. The. Doctor.’ He scratched the back of his neck.‘Now, would I be wrong to think you’ve dug something up that youreally, really don’t understand?’Frank sighed. ‘And I suppose you’ll know just what it is.’.

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The Doctor shrugged. ‘Might do. Sorry. Everybody loves a smartarse. . . ’Frank pointed down a narrow corridor that led off the main dig.‘Image on the right of the mosaic. Down there. Follow the lights.’The Doctor gave him a thumbs-up and walked off. Frank staredafter him and wondered. And the more he wondered, the odder thethoughts that came into his head.One of the students broke into his thinking. ‘Frank!’ he called fromthe pit. ‘There’s something metal down here. Dead weird it is!’The Doctor sauntered along the corridor. A standard lamp shonedown on to a display case with a large, rough-edged mosaic inside.The Doctor guessed that when the Britons had looted the Roman townabove, they’d tossed it down into the caves too.He saw what was depicted there and felt his hearts skip a beat. Atthe same moment he heard cries of excitement and surprise from themain dig. The radio was switched off.He ran back. ‘Frank! Mr Openshaw!’He emerged into the huge hollowed-out room and jumped downinto the pit, striding over to where Openshaw and his workers weregathered in a far corner.‘Get away from it!’ he called, pushing a couple of the students aside.And found himself facing a Dalek.

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CHAPTER FOUR‘L OOKS LIKE A ROBOT,’ said Frank.The thing had been unearthed hurriedly by the students. In theirexcitement they had forgotten that the first rule of archaeology waspatience. Its base was still covered in earth and its sides were caked inlumps of dirt. It looked exactly like the thing in the mosaic. Its goldencasing had lost its colour but it remained whole. Eye-stalk, sucker andstubby gun were lifted arrogantly. The Doctor waved a hand over theeyepiece. No reaction.He seemed to consider for a second. Then, as Frank moved to touchit, he cried, ‘It’s a bomb! Step back from it, Frank!’Frank pulled his hand back. One of the students looked the Doctorup and down, then asked, ‘Who’s this?’Frank and the Doctor looked at each other. Somehow, Frank trustedthis odd young stranger. ‘It’s the bloke from London,’ he heard himselfsaying, though he knew it wasn’t true.The Doctor slapped the student’s arm down as he lifted it towardsthe gun stick. ‘And the bloke from London says get back!’ Then hegrabbed a loud hailer from the floor of the pit and called, ‘Evacuatethe area! I have authority from London and all that! Get up to thesurface now!’Frank wasn’t surprised when the students obeyed. But he foundhimself remaining.The museum teashop opened early. Kate, who was the only customer,munched in a daze on a teacake while speaking on the phone to Serena. Getting angry with Serena was pointless – but still, Kate wasgetting angry. ‘Yes, I was nearly run over. Just now.’‘Nearly run over running for the late bus, then?’ asked Serena’sdull, flat voice.

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‘The “nearly run over” part of the sentence is the important bit!’Kate snapped.She felt a wave of anger rushing up inside her. Why did she haveto even pretend to be polite to this idiot? The meaning of the phrase‘seeing red’ suddenly became clear to her. She felt that if Serena hadbeen there she could have picked up her butter knife and stabbed her.But she wasn’t, so she flipped her mobile shut and grabbed the café’scopy of the paper from the counter. Idly, she turned to the puzzle page.She might have a go at the easy crossword to calm herself down.The sudoku puzzles caught her eye instead. She’d hardly botheredto look at them before – she’d always been rubbish at maths – butthis morning the numbers seemed to dance in the air. Without eventhinking about it she filled all the empty boxes in – for all three: theeasy, hard and killer sudokus – her fingers whizzing across the page.Then she looked at the crosswords. She filled in the blanks with letterseasily, solving even the hardest clues in fractions of a second.It was easy. Really easy. Why had she never noticed that before?She looked around, taking deep breaths. Something in the worldhad changed – or was it inside her?She could see the atoms dancing around the room. She knew theexact temperature of her coffee. She saw and understood the chemicalprocesses taking place inside the cup. But this wasn’t like thinking.She didn’t have to concentrate, or make an effort. It felt as naturalas breathing. And with it came a sense of strength and power. Herhand reached for a sachet of sweetener in a bowl. She rubbed it gentlybetween her thumb and finger and watched as it broke apart in a littleblizzard of static electricity.She took another deep breath and looked up. Someone had enteredthe little shop – the pretty blonde girl who’d held her hand out in theroad, Rose. That seemed like a dream. She wanted to sneer. As if aspeeding car could stop her!‘So you’re OK now?’ asked Rose.Kate smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks. Just gonna finish this and go to work.Thanks.’Rose sat down next to her, leaning close. ‘That car smacked right

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into you. You were dying. What’s the deal? You can tell me.’Kate bridled. ‘Sorry. Could you move a bit back? I like my personalspace.’Rose pointed to Kate’s blouse. ‘You’re covered in blood. You shouldbe dead.’There was something very kind and trusting in the girl’s deep browneyes. Kate swallowed; a cruel thought came into her mind. Suchemotions were weak.Rose went on, ‘I know what it feels like. Something happens thatyou can’t explain. You invent any excuse to stop thinking about it.’‘What’s your name again?’ asked Kate, though she knew.‘Rose. Rose Tyler.’ She held out her hand.Kate took it, shook it. Tight. ‘Great. Now then, Rose Tyler, clear off.I’ve got enough on my plate.’Rose flinched and pulled her hand away.Frank watched as the Doctor ran that glowing metal tube of his slowlyover the object he’d described as a bomb. Then the Doctor gave a deepsigh. Some of the cheeky light came back into his eyes. He lookedacross at Frank. ‘Is there any point me asking you to go home?’‘None,’ said Frank. He pointed to the section of the bomb wherethe domed head met a rusty metal grille surrounded by metal slats.‘Could be a hinge there.’The Doctor smiled. ‘I like you, Frank Openshaw. You’re clever.’He applied the tip of the tube to the hinge and then carefully liftedup the dome. Frank came closer. Inside there was a tangle of electronic parts and wires. It looked as if something was missing in thiscentral space, something about the size of a football that would oncehave sat there. The Doctor reached in and picked up a handful ofdust. He sifted it between his fingers and then blew it away.‘Dead as a doornail,’ he said. He seemed relieved – but also, Frankfelt, perhaps a little sad, as if staring into the past.Frank made a small snorting noise. ‘A bomb? In earth that hasn’tbeen touched for 2,000 years?’